Diskussion:Diskussion/@comment-92.73.205.237-20110217200925
Für anwesende Akademiker: “Academic freedom was introduced to protect the search truth and teaching of it. I submit that the academic charlatans have not earned the academic freedom they enjoy. They have not earned it because they produce or circulate cultural garbage, which is not just a non-academic activity but an antiacademic one. Let them do that wherever they please except in schools, for these are supposed to be places of learning. We should expel the charlatans from the university before they deform it out of recognition and crowd out the serious searchers for truth. The academic charlatans should be criticized, nay denounced, with the same rigor and vigor that Julien Benda (1927) attacked the intellectual mercenaries of his time in his memorable La trahison des clercs— which, incidentally, earned him the hatred of the so-called “organic intellectuals” of all political hues. Spare the rod and spoil the charlatan. Spoil the charlatan and put modem culture at risk, Jeopardize modern culture and undermine modem civilization. Debilitate modem civilization and prepare for a new Dark Age. In former times, higher learning was only a refined form of entertainment and a tool of social control. Today it is all that and more: Scientific knowledge, science-based technology and the rationalist humanities are not only intrinsically valuable public goods but also means of production and welfare, as well as conditions of democratic debate and rational conflict resolution. The search for authentic knowledge should therefore be protected from attack and counterfeit both inside and outside academia. To protect genuine research and scholarship I propose adopting the following Charter of Intellectual Academic Rights and Duties 1. Every academic has the duty to search for the truth and the right to teach it. 2. Every academic has the right and the duty to question anything that interests him, provided he does it in a rational manner. 3. Every academic has the right to make mistakes and the duty to correct them upon detecting them. 4. Every academic has the duty to expose bunk, whether popular or academic. 5. Every academic has the duty to express himself in the clearest possible way. 6. All academics have the right to discuss any unorthodox views that interest them, provided those views are clear enough to be discussed rationally. 7. No academic has the right to present as true ideas that he cannot justify in terms of either reason or experience. 8. Nobody has the right to engage knowingly in any academic industry. 9. Every academic body has the duty to adopt and enforce the most rigorous known Standards of scholarship and learning. 10. Every academic body has the duty to be intolerant to both counterculture and counterfeit culture. To conclude. Let us tolerate, nay encourage, all search for truth. However eccentric it may look, as long as it abides by reason or experience. But let US fight all attempts to suppress, discredit or fake this search. Let all genuine intellectuals join the Truth Squad and help dismantle the “postmodern” Trojan horse stabled in academia before it destroys us.” (Mario A. Bunge: The Sociology-Philosophy Connection, New Brunswick/London 1999, 221-223)